Ces Basi

My story begins in Collelongo, a small village in Italy's Abruzzo region.

In 1960, at the age of four, I left behind the mountains and traditions of my birthplace when my mother and I boarded the MS Aurelia, an immigrant ship bound for Australia.

For my mother, it was a long-awaited reunion with the husband she had been separated from by distance and time. For me, it was the first meeting with my father, a man I knew only from a faded black-and-white photograph.

That voyage was more than a journey across seas and oceans. It was the start of a lifelong search for identity, belonging, and the meaning of family, a story of migration, resilience, and hope carried across continents.